The present invention relates generally to trolling lures that are used in connection with fishing vessels to attract fish to the surface of the water to facilitate a catch, and more particularly to an improved collapsible luring dredge wherein a plurality of separate hub sections each adapted to hold an extended spreader bar is joined into a stacked hub assembly with spring-loaded detents operatively disposed therein so that the hub sections may rotate and lock independently into registered positions and thereby move the dredge between a deployed configuration wherein the spreader bars are maintained in a radial pattern for trolling use and a folded configuration wherein the bars are aligned for storage.
Sport fishing in freshwater and saltwater is extremely popular around the world and provides enjoyment and competition to millions of enthusiasts. Essential to sport fishing, artificial lures intended to simulate live bait in their appearance and movement have long been used and are found in a variety of styles, designs and arrangements suitable for casting and trolling. Trolling lures used commonly in offshore fishing are towed on extended lines from a moving boat to draw game fish to a trailing hook using the look and action of the lures in the water as well as the water disturbance they make to attract the game fish and bring them close to the water surface for the catch. A wide variety of these trolling lures can be found rigged both in-line on so-called “daisy chains” and in umbrella-like “spreader” rigs designed to simulate a school of moving baitfish when trolled using an array of artificial lures in the form of strips called teasers bearing fish images that are particularly effective in attracting fresh water stripers and big game fish of all sorts.
Luring dredges are weighted trolling devices that have become increasingly popular in offshore fishing to create the illusion of a tightly packed school of baitfish swimming just beneath the surface of the water. These luring dredges generally comprise a plurality of metallic spreader arms of stainless steel or titanium that extend out in multiple directions from a centralized hub with a series of coupling members called “droppers” along each spreader arm that can accept and engage any number of teaser strips for deployment upon the dredge. In the past, these luring dredges were primarily found in a fixed umbrella-like structure that was bulky and cumbersome for the angler to carry and store. Improvements to the structure of these luring dredges made them somewhat collapsible either with foldable spreader arms or arms that were reversibly screwed to the centralized hub. Further improvement has also been made in the structure and operation of a collapsible dredge by making the centralized hub into separate movable segments that could alternately be loosened and tightened together to allow the hub with its spreader arms to rotate between a folded position for storage and a open position for trolling use. See U.S. Pat. No. 7,412,795 to Glynn et al.
While the prior art forms of collapsible luring dredges have been found to be generally satisfactory and effective in their fully deployed state, hub construction has been somewhat complicated causing some difficulties to anglers in the handling and manipulation of the dredge device needed to deploy and fold its collapsible structure as well as requiring separate mechanical tools for the angler to complete deployment and then return the dredge to its collapsed state. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved collapsible luring dredge device that is simpler in construction and easier to manipulate than those prior art dredges heretofore designed and developed and able to be equally or more effective in its deployed state as a trolling lure.